Sorry about this but it’s more Savile….it does seem that the BBC are interfering with the due process of any inquiry into this affair……
The BBC have announced two inquiries into the Savile business looking at whether the BBC was in any way to blame and why the Newsnight investigation was pulled.
However judging by what I have seen and heard and what some of the comments here are saying it would seem that the BBC has already decided and is on a mission to ‘fix’ the public’s perceptions regardless of the inquiries’ outcome.
It is wheeling in the big guns in a damage limitation exercise that is set on muddying the waters and massaging the truth.
We’ve had John Humphrys suggesting it was all so long ago and in a culture that is long gone, we’ve had Joan Bakewell spinning the same line….
“We were all padded, pinched, stroked, the whole female sex was available in those days – not willingly so – in the 1960s. It was how you treated women.”
But perhaps not how you treated 11,12,13, 14 year old girls…and boys.
Tory MP Rob Wilson delving deeper stated on the same programme that: ‘There was a culture in the BBC of Senior BBC management targeting younger female employees’……and he rightly says that other organisations also have many questions to answer but that doesn’t mean the BBC should escape from also providing answers.
And we’ve had Victoria Derbyshire doing a double act (45 mins) with ex-Today editor Kevin Marsh.
Derbyshire herself pre-empts the inquiry possible findings by stating that Newsnight dumped the programme because of ‘editorial reasons’……she reads out a few texts or emails that are against the BBC but the only callers that get through are pro-BBC…however she does read out this classic…..
‘Apart from harbouring tax dodgers and paedophiles the BBC does a cracking job’.
She then brings in Kevin Marsh to spread his own form of oil upon troubled waters….he has difficulty with recognising, or admitting the truth…..Derbyshire fed Marsh the questions and got the required answers…nothing to see here, move along. It is quite apparent that programmes such as this are meant to make people’s minds up about the BBC’s role long before any inquiry comes up with its own answers.
The BBC is acting as judge and jury in its own defence….and strangely enough finding all the evidence points to an acquittal.
KM: There will always be people who will be suspicious of big organisations and believe in conspiracy….having been inside the BBC for 30 years I know that is not true about the BBC’….he then comes up with his own conspiracy theory….’It is a commercial (Murdoch?) or political (Conservatives?) conspiracy against the BBC…no matter what the BBC says, it will be at fault’……he said it was ‘very easy to get angry about something for the sake of a newspaper column.’
So it’s all just a big conspiracy….firstly by anyone who just doesn’t trust ‘Big Organisations’ and secondly by Dark Forces opposed to the BBC seeking to attack it….and its all really about false anger drummed up to fill a few column inches.
KM: I believe George Entwistle when he said he didn’t interfere with Newsnight because it is part of the BBC’s makeup to be rigorously independent and to avoid allegations of interference…it’s not the way the BBC works for bosses to interfere…..There’s no question that Newsnight wasn’t pressured to drop the investigation…there were sound editorial reasons for it not to go ahead…..The investigation wasn’t even complete really, not a film ready to go….if we’d gone ahead and been wrong it would have been catastrophic.
That’s OK then….he believes Entwistle, the BBC is rigorously independent, and it was an internal Newsnight editorial policy to abandon the investigation.
No need for any inquiry at all then…it’s just an exercise in ‘seeing justice being done’…all a waste of time and money….as ‘Auntie’ is so trusted and respected it of course could never really be found to have done anything wrong.
Marsh has his version…but other BBC sources say otherwise:…let’s have Derbyshire & Co interviewing them…..
‘Questions remain about just why Newsnight editor Peter Rippon took the decision to stop the report, and how close it was to completion when he did so. On Sunday Kevin Marsh, a former editor of Today who has now left the BBC, wrote a blog that was sympathetic to Rippon. “When the Newsnight editor paused the investigation, it was still at the evidence-gathering stage… evidence he was beginning to have doubts about,” wrote Marsh. “In other words, there was nothing to ‘pull’ – there was an investigation in progress and it had hit a brick wall. There was no script, even, in spite of what’s been reported in the press.”
Meirion Jones, the then Newsnight producer who was putting together the Savile report (and who is now working on a new Savile investigation for Panorama), declined to comment when contacted by The Daily Telegraph. But Pollard will want to ask Jones whether Marsh’s version of events is correct, or whether Jones’s Newsnight report was – as some BBC sources continue to insist – actually at a more advanced stage (and therefore less easy to shelve for genuine “editorial reasons”).’
The irony of an organisation that perpetuates White/Christian guilt, over the crusades/the slave trade/ colonialism using the ‘it was a long time ago’ excuse, is frankly astounding.
Yes Brian, my thoughts exactly. All this it was another time, another culture, it was normal back then etc suddenly seems acceptable.
Yes, I am still waiting for them to use that line in defence of Catholic Priests….. I cannot see them doing so however.
Bottom line? The BBC harboured, facilitated, enabled and covered up child sexual exploitation and sexual assaults by their staff on their premises for decades.
This is not a hacked phone. Murdoch shut down the News of the World over far far less than the systemic, institutionalised child abuse carried out by the BBC. in the BBC’s name.
Murdoch set the precedent. The BBC should be shut down.
Tonight was a really bad Left-wing bias night for the BBC-perhaps the worst I’ve ever seen. Six o’clock news consisted of appalling Obama-fawning, refusal to link Islam to yet another fanatic caught trying to detonate a bomb in the US, glee that the British leftie establishment has yet another country to lord it over regarding football racism, and the playing down of good employment figures. BBC News 24 was accusing not only the Serbia, the Balkans and Eastern Europe as racist but also America; awful BBC 24 section on racism at US baseball games… almost vomited! Newsnight was tantamount to a Labour political broadcast… sheesh…. pretty good for one night.
BBC loved Miliband’s speech today at PMQs. Also, how can an ‘impartial’ organization continually come out with statements like, “Obama comes out swinging” and “Obama is in no mood to tak prisoners… ” P.A.T.H.E.T.I.C!
regarding the unemployment figures and the bBC’s take on it all day, I couldn’t help thinking that every silver lining has a cloud.
the bBC – HALF the news ALL the time.
Spot on. I was driving home late last night and the tone of the newsreader on the Radio2 news was so downbeat. He was reading out good news, in the tone of someone announcing a death in the family. He only sounded cheery when he added, “Lots of part time people cannot get full time jobs” at the end.
When he said that these figures show that the private sector is creating employment, you would have thought he was announcing the start of world war three.
It’s going to be difficult to nail a 3.5 billion p.a. professional propaganda machine with their overwhelmingly dominant position in the media.
The establishment will close ranks and limit damage as far as possible, as there appears to be many of them who might get spattered if the press dig too deeply.
Why do you think that, considering the number of times Savile was questioned by police at various times, the vetting process didn’t pick it up before he was knighted?
You have to wonder
And they safely named it as “The Balen Inquiry”.
Pardon; Saville. “The Saville Inquiry”.
“The BBC is acting as judge and jury in its own defence….and strangely enough finding all the evidence points to an acquittal.”
What a coincidence! Don’t paedophiles use the exact same technique – deny it with a range of excuses blaming everyone but themselves?
Ah, the wonderful sexual freedom (abuse?) of the 1960s in the workplace as so defensively described by the BBC oiks. Ah, yes, the good, or should that be bad, old days?
Well, Savile only became famous at the BBC just before the turn of the 1970s, and even back then forty year old men, Savile’s age at the time, molesting underaged teenage girls was not only unacceptable back then but would also, if discovered, lead to prosecution. Even back then such perversion was, when exposed, something the general public found disgusting and totally unacceptable and such perverts would be shunned by all decent people.
Savile’s behaviour, and by the sound of it that of some others at the BBC, was not a matter of some men with wandering hands becoming over attentive towards female staff in a way that would be unacceptable now, but of adult perverts sexually abusing young children, something which is on a different scale altogether and one for which there is no possible excuse.
Even worse is the fact that such vile abuse was not only casually ignored by apparently actively condoned al the way to the very top of the BBC not only to protect those involved but to cover up any perception that the BBC might be anything less than it’s own constant declarations of it’s absolute perfection.
The BBC will undoubtedly fall back on it’s usual behaviour of ramping up the propaganda of it’s own infallibility by putting forward it’s pet apologists and excusers along with crying bias by those who dare expose it and by playing down the integrity of anybody making alligations against it or it’s staff. It will undoubtedly use and abuse it’s prepoderance of current affairs programmes on TV and its almost total monopoly of both current affairs and in depth news on radio.
The BBC may hurl abuse at certain sections of the media who dare disagree with it or who it considered “inferior” but when it’s back is agains the wall the BBC will sink lower than a rat in a sewer to attack and denigrate it’s accusers.
I get it now. The BBC isn’t guilty of anything, just like all those agni innocenti who were caught up in the crowd during those August riots. Not really their fault.
There’s a rather good Savile/BBC related article here…
…journalists are in the disclosure business and I fear that on this occasion Rippon may have forgotten that point. His reasoning provides a taster of the sort of journalistic world we could all live in if Lord Justice Leveson decides to be too prescriptive in demanding that all controversial stories – ie. anything really newsworthy – has to be justified in the public interest.
Journalists who appoint themselves as guardians of the public interest run the risk of becoming their own censors.
http://www.pressgazette.co.uk/content/why-newsnight-could-take-lesson-ethics-news-world
Whodathunkit?
‘the BBC are interfering with the due process of any inquiry’
The route from reporting news to being it to then reshaping from truth to narrative (especially in cover up) it is a sordid one, but it’s a creek the BBC has managed to navigate up with arrogant ease sans paddle. Using a compelled £4bpa fund from the public it misinforms, tries to re-educate or abuses (on occasion, literally).
Interesting the latest bit of on-record testimony from BBC staff in the comments, that further undermines the ‘no one knew’ claim, if adding semantic heft to the ‘no one complained’ avenue.
‘I have had Savile on my conscience for more than twenty years, since I scripted his This Is Your Life tribute by Michael Aspel: http://www.sportsjournalists.c…. The man was a maggot and I did not have the courage to stand up and be counted.’
Many knew. But thanks to the institutional culture that pervades this vast, unaccountable body, no one felt able to speak up, and those that did suffered too. How the BBC would treat any other organisation running such a system is not in doubt.
Speaking of which, as I restrain the mirth reading VD’s guest’s professional input that ‘belief’ in rectitude is still ‘believed’ to cut any ice outside the BBC delusion zone, I ponder the outstanding ‘investigations’ being conducted by the BBC on any who may presume to hold them to account and then get threatened with or have imposed an expediting.
‘Journalists who appoint themselves as guardians of the public interest run the risk of becoming their own censors. ‘
Especially when already backed by a censorship mop-up squad that ensure that few, if any checks or balances that may give them pause come to light.
From ‘New York Times’, new home of ex-BBC Director General,
Mark Thompson, who apparently has barely heard of Mr Savile,
or of ‘Newsnight’.
“Sexual Abuse Scandal Turns the Tables on BBC”
By SARAH LYALL
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/18/world/europe/jimmy-savile-scandal-turns-the-tables-on-bbc-program.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0
‘said recently that he had not known the “Newsnight” segment on Mr. Savile was in the works’
Hellfire, there must be a Horizon special on how selective Alzheimers can affect only £600kpa market rate talents, too.
I’d love to see a Paxo ECU (extra close up… not Editorial Cover-ups Unit) if any senior exec form any non-unique outfit tried that one on.
There’s a lot of this BBC Savile-related amnesia about.
Yesterday some 5 Live drone was giving Michael Palin’s new show (BBC1) a bunk up.
Sorry, Palin popped in to talk about his exciting encouters with Brazilians (calm down Richard Bacon, stop frothing at the mouth, it wasn’t that Palin).
There was one question put to our minor national treasure that was a little out of turn.
“So what did you know or hear about Jimmy Savile?”
To borrow from John Cleese’s Manuel
– our Michael “He know nothing!”
Didn’t know the man. Didn’t hear anything. Don’t think our paths ever crossed sort of thing.
So we have to assume no fellow Pythons ever said anything along the lines of ‘did you hear the one about Jimmy Savile’. Odd.
Follow up question again a little out of turn “But didn’t you appear on the same edition of Parkinson?”
Oh yeah, I’d forgotten that.
Sorry, too busy still having fun to scroll past to find you were there ahead of me.
This really is the gift that keeps on giving though.
Michael Palin appearing on The Michael Parkinson Show with Jimmy Savile does not mean that he knew that he was a paedophile.
True, but that isn’t what was said:
‘Didn’t know the man. …Don’t think our paths ever crossed sort of thing.
Which given this…
‘..“But didn’t you appear on the same edition of Parkinson?”’
… afterwards, if as described, makes it worthy of comment as institutional forgetfulness would then appear rife throughout the organisation.
@Old Bill
The gist of the comment by “As I See It” is that Palin was doing what amounts to an impression of Mrs Scum from the Python sketch “Spot the Braincell”:
quote
“I never even heard of him”
unquote
…………………………………….
★ Spot the Braincell ★
…………………………………….
Palin was not accused of anything other than having a selective memory.
~
Old Bill. Not sure where you are coming from in this. You may just be a dead parrot fan. If you are interested in debate then let’s do some compare and contrast.
Harriet Harman was recently asked what she had thought of Savile. Her answer: ‘I always thought he was a bit creepy’
Now I think Michael Palin was probably just keeping his head down. OK so he has taken a nice chunk of the BBC shilling over the years but we might well say he is indeed ‘talent’. But I’m afraid he – just like most BBC employees – I can’t believe has no Savile anecdote to tell. As for the Harman quote I reckon she is simply jumping on the bandwagon. There are hints in her CV that she may not always have regarded all such individuals with Savile’s unpleasant tastes as ‘creepy’.
Well Michael Palin either 1) Forget that he had once been on a show where Jimmy Savile was one of the guests 2) Felt no desire to boast about having once met a paedophile. Hardly worth drawing attention to in either case.
“Felt no desire to boast about having once met a paedophile.”
Boast?
You’re a strange one and no mistake!
Twig, maybe you ought to watch a chat show some time. In between the host hogging the limelight, and the guest promoting their latest product, boasting about all the famous people they have come into contact with over the years is pretty much all they do.
Not wanting to boast about having met the famous Jimmy Savile is rather the point, or did that bit go over your head.
Don’t pay the license fee (simple)
Getting to the point that I wonder if the local beak may have some sympathy for making the case that to continue funding such an organsation, housing lawbreakers, covering up abuse, lying and cheating to the highest levels… by compulsion… was in breach of my human rights over and above a requirement such that my sense of decency and ethics can no long be compelled to comply.
Matt today is a gem
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/matt/
At least the BBC need only go through Saviles engagement diaries to see who THIS years Children in Need will turn out to be!
Or will the money go to druggies, rioters, muggers and those who denounced Tory cuts on behalf of the BBC with a hired child beside them ?
I will not be letting bloody Pudsey near my cheque at any rate-is he REALLY that “vulnerable”…or just “doing a Jimmy” on us?
Savile certainly spent enough time with Pudsey-and they`re Yorkshire lads together in this one as afar as I`m concerned!
Just give us Saviles filofax and we`ll send the money direct to the victims directly….Rantzen can buy her OWN sweeties and colouring books herself ,in future!
We keep hearing how the Newsnight enquiry into Savile was dropped for “editorial reasons”, but no-one has ever said what these “reasons” actually were. Surely if these “reasons” were genuine then we could be told what they were, and allow us to make up our own minds.
The fact that no information has been given out about these “editorial reasons” can only lead to the conclusion that they did not exist, and that an edict had come down from management
Newsnight editor Peter Rippon’s explanation of why he pulled the story is here. In a nutshell, he states that they found no institutional failure on the part of the BBC, the police or the CPS. Without this, he judges the story to be just a celebrity exposé and not really Newsnight’s thing. The story was not a fit for brand Newsnight.
‘ Brand Newsnight’
Which is now worth about as much for news credibility as a 1crt engagement ring from Ratners the day after their boss opened his mouth.
Which may explain why there has been not a peep out of them in the now weeks since that closed out at… 42 before the topic even really got well heated up.
They speak for the nation, you know.
‘…they found no institutional failure on the part of the BBC, the police or the CPS’
Well let’s be honest, there seemed to be no institutional failure at the Police or the CPS …..and as for the BBC? – don’t go there!
Thanks for pointing me to this, Beeboidal, as I hadn’t seen it. It’s funny, though, that the article is tucked away on the BBC website. AFAIA none of the newspapers have picked up on it — I hadn’t come across anyone outside the BBC reporting that the Newsnight investigation had been dropped because “Newsnight doesn’t do celebrity exposés.”
“…he states that they found no institutional failure on the part of the BBC…”
Well despite the uninvestigated rumours of the time, which so many Beeboids seem to have been aware of, they made him the host of a program where he could select children to spend time with him, unsupervised.
I would say that is a spectacular institutional failure which had very nasty consequences for some of the children.
Bah, it was a different era: when the BBC had a “massive bias to the Left”.
Only they don’t consider that to be an institutional failure, either.
Interfering in the inquiry? Reading again what Marsh said to the ‘Telegraph’ he certainly seems very well briefed and quite sure of himself. It seems to me that he is acting in concert with those under investigation in an attempt to spike this. And in anycase, the DG has declared that we should take the word of his people. Taking peoples word for things is a departure for the BBC. I hope that David Cameron reminds them of this when they go on their next witch-hunt and refuse to accept what he says!
In such an investigation, Pollard would normally be given access to e-mails and minutes of meetings, it is not clear that this will be the case this time – or whether it would even be worthwhile. It is said that Rippon gave his decsion for the expose to be dropped ‘verbally’, something said to be quite unusual.
And by the way! with regard to Harman / PIE / BBC: Should the BBC want to look in their archives they will find that in the 70’s, on more than one occasion they gave airtime to PIE and those sympathetic to the argument that under-age sex could be beneficial to the deveolpment of children. This was not an expose of wrongdoing, but an invitation to appear before BBC cameras to promote and discuss their beliefs. Perhaps the BBC can dig this out for Janet Smith to see.
” I hope that David Cameron reminds them of this when they go on their next witch-hunt ”
your not serious are you? Dopey dave to atually do something about the beeb?
Dont hold your breath mate!
Maybe David Gregory can make a long overdue return to these pages and explain how on this occasion it’s OK for the BBC to prejudice the outcome of any criminal investigation, but not on numerous others?
I think he only keeps coming back to get outraged enough to flounce off.
And if deigning to comment this would most certainly fall under the FriendsOrInstitutions exclusion clause on powers that can’t be accounted for.
DG got married recently and is probably too busy to come back here any time soon.
Like the No. 38 bus, you go away for a few days and nothing… then you come back and all your Christmasses turn up at once…
http://order-order.com/2012/10/18/breaking-panorama-to-broadcast-savile-newsnight-report-monday/
They have to do this to counter all the charges of the BBC trying to shift blame and sweep it under the rug. I kind of feel sorry for the people who have to investigate personal friends and colleagues like this.
Usually when people circle the wagons, they fire outwards rather than inwards. But I guess you’re supposed to credit them for their integrity now. Jury’s out until the show is.
Panorama’s reputation has taken a serious dive recently. I’m wondering if it’ll be a proper investigation, or just more of the defense team stating their case.
By sheer coincidence, BBC regular, and faithful, Mark Steel, has come out, as it were, in their defence.
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/comment/in-the-wake-of-the-savile-scandal-only-the-complete-abolition-of-the-bbc-will-do-8215362.html
Thing is, even though it’s in the Indy, the comments seem not to be going his way.
Even more oddly, some are noting a few are being ‘vanished’.
The BBC, Graun and now Indy… censoring in support of propaganda? Shocked I tell you… shocked!
Wagons, circled. Since when does “tolerated and abetted” equal “caused”?
Should that be “Wogans Circled”?
Poor old Terry didn`t half have his share of seedballs like Jimmy Savile on his show did he not?
Must be great fun at BBC Enterprises as they redact all pictures of Savile with them all…from Prince Charles/Lady Di downwards.
Superb…a real rail crash a la Selby!
As with virtually all BBC’s leftist so-called comedians, their ultimate defence of BBC in their economic self-interest at the Corporation, trumps criticism of the BBC.
But when they select what they think are their oh-so-amusing perennial targets of Tories, Thatcher, Daily Mail, and Christianity, there’s no stopping them.
Mark Steel is just the kind of lickspittle who is not funny, but will always get a berth on lefty forums like the BBC…Thomas, Bragg, Hobsbawm…our kind of people.
His article is typical him….it`s what the BBC pay him for, and they get our money to pay for it.
Desperate-humour bypass and student rebellion until he works for BOSS…or its equally sick counterpart that doesn`t even need a monicker.
It`s endemic leftie paintball…and rest assured that no lefty comedian will touch Savile with their bargepoles…oo er!
“‘It’s not a crisis at the BBC. Not yet, anyway’
“Staff at the corporation are frustrated at the way the management has handled the Jimmy Savile allegations and the contentious ‘Newsnight’ report that never aired.”
By Neil Midgley.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/tvandradio/bbc/9615119/Its-not-a-crisis-at-the-BBC.-Not-yet-anyway.html
Not at all Alan…do NOT , for one second: be “sorry” about regurgitating the old Savile stuff.
If Andrew Mitchell is already on four weeks, if Leveson took 24/7 for three months (and more of course)…if the Catholic Church continued to give Jeremy Hardy his steer for years-I am resolved to hang the scrawny, cigar toting shellsuit around the neck of the spineless conniving BBC until they both go to landfill.
We`re only into the second week as far as I can tell-and there are so many more questions to ask of the Star Chamber of Horrors that is the BBC….paid for by us, and cashed in by other peoples kids.
Did Savile have any links with the M62 kekeb shop owners between Oldham and Bradford?…I for one am fascinated to know!
Quite right!
For years Lefty organisations have been imposing their will through relentless smears, sneers and intimidation (e.g. shouting people down, and labelling them racists).
These tactics of suppression worked, which let them have the power to do as they wished.
What they have done with their power is now starting to be revealed. And the vileness we are seeing demands persistence and ruthlessness in exposing them for all the normal people of Britain to see.
John Humphrey doing his best to deflect attention away from the BBC by referring to what is going on there now as a ‘witchhunt’, and trivialising the kind of sexual abuse that happened as ‘not so serious’.
His opinion might have more weight if the BBC themselves had not pursued Murdoch and the Catholic Church with such zeal. We have the saying ‘what goes around; comes around’, and it fulfils our sense of justice when those who have lost balance in pursuing their own agenda are subject to a similar scrutiny and criticism. Even though there is far less pressure so far on the BBC than they have exerted when it suits themselves.
There is also the fact that the BBC as a publicly funded organisation supposedly has a responsibility over and above any private one to be completely stain free. We know for many reasons that they are far from that, and what Humphrey shows is that this aspect doesn’t enter his consciousness for one moment. He shows himself as human slime, as I believe so many others in the BBC inner circle share with him.
“BBC to air special Jimmy Savile Panorama investigation”
http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/bbc-to-air-special-jimmy-savile-panorama-investigation-8218532.html
“Fresh BBC controversy as airing of Panorama’s Savile investigation may be delayed ”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2219950/Jimmy-Savile-Fresh-BBCs-Panorama-investigation-delayed.html
“EPHRAIM HARDCASTLE: Will Savile be the death of Newsnight?”
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2219913/Will-Jimmy-Savile-death-Newsnight.html
What does Keith Vaz have to say about all this?
What do you think?
he wont say anything because it goes against his bbc principles and credentials. And he was keeping his head low after finding himself the subject of financial questions.